Solar power will soon be as cheap as coal

[Ringel05]

Missing the point? Looks like it.

Point is --- 1000s of products have been obsoleted by portable gadgets. Faxs, answering machines, watches, calculators, cameras, ect -- And the AppleWatch is a repacking of a remote control gadget. PRODUCT INNOVATION is virtually stagnant. MOST new consumer electronics is boring.

OTH -- Power Generation really hasn't changed much in 100 yrs. Wind is still turning a turbine, Solar is still the photoelectric effect.

You can OPTIMIZE your way out of the sun being at a useful angle for 6 hours a day or less by motorizing panels to track the sun. STILL leaves about 16 hours of NO POWER. And Wind will only be there on alternate Tuesdays, and Fridays and parts of Sunday.. That's what YOU'RE missing.

So no matter how big a tantrum the eco-nauts throw -- these 2 things are NOT alternatives to reliable power generation. They are peaker and supplement technologies.. Cannot EXPAND a system capacity with either or both of them..

The point was it could take hundreds of years and trillions of dollars to perfect some form of alternative energy. I'd be more inclined though to try and develop some sort of small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) enclosed system Pelton Wheel technology that once turned on will power a house and itself. Combine that with solar and wind (where applicable) and you'd probably have more than enough energy.

You're talking about a perpetual motion machine. They violate the laws of thermodynamics, which means they are impossible.

No it's not a perpetual motion machine as I think you're envisioning it. They already exist, they're just large and expensive or relatively cheap and based on water flow from a river or stream (for individual usage). It's an enclosed system (self feeding) water turbine that I'm talking about.

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

 

[Ringel05]

Oh and down here in the upper desert we get sun about 80% of the time, the cloudiest weather is in July and August (the monsoon season), solar energy is very effective at reducing heating and cooling costs.

That doesn't work in Florida because it rains a lot during the summer and the humidity is 100%

Exactly, there is no one solution for everyone. Heck even during our monsoons the humidity gets up to 70%, swamp coolers are only effective if the humidity is below 35%.

 

[bripat9643]

Point is --- 1000s of products have been obsoleted by portable gadgets. Faxs, answering machines, watches, calculators, cameras, ect -- And the AppleWatch is a repacking of a remote control gadget. PRODUCT INNOVATION is virtually stagnant. MOST new consumer electronics is boring.

OTH -- Power Generation really hasn't changed much in 100 yrs. Wind is still turning a turbine, Solar is still the photoelectric effect.

You can OPTIMIZE your way out of the sun being at a useful angle for 6 hours a day or less by motorizing panels to track the sun. STILL leaves about 16 hours of NO POWER. And Wind will only be there on alternate Tuesdays, and Fridays and parts of Sunday.. That's what YOU'RE missing.

So no matter how big a tantrum the eco-nauts throw -- these 2 things are NOT alternatives to reliable power generation. They are peaker and supplement technologies.. Cannot EXPAND a system capacity with either or both of them..

The point was it could take hundreds of years and trillions of dollars to perfect some form of alternative energy. I'd be more inclined though to try and develop some sort of small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) enclosed system Pelton Wheel technology that once turned on will power a house and itself. Combine that with solar and wind (where applicable) and you'd probably have more than enough energy.

You're talking about a perpetual motion machine. They violate the laws of thermodynamics, which means they are impossible.

No it's not a perpetual motion machine as I think you're envisioning it. They already exist, they're just large and expensive or relatively cheap and based on water flow from a river or stream (for individual usage). It's an enclosed system (self feeding) water turbine that I'm talking about.

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

 

[Ringel05]

The point was it could take hundreds of years and trillions of dollars to perfect some form of alternative energy. I'd be more inclined though to try and develop some sort of small, inexpensive (relatively speaking) enclosed system Pelton Wheel technology that once turned on will power a house and itself. Combine that with solar and wind (where applicable) and you'd probably have more than enough energy.

You're talking about a perpetual motion machine. They violate the laws of thermodynamics, which means they are impossible.

No it's not a perpetual motion machine as I think you're envisioning it. They already exist, they're just large and expensive or relatively cheap and based on water flow from a river or stream (for individual usage). It's an enclosed system (self feeding) water turbine that I'm talking about.

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

Think!! It would be a reservoir tank at a specific height with two pumps, one to return the water up to the tank and one to high pressure pump the water at the Pelton Wheel generating enough power to run an entire household and the pump itself.
Matter of fact if you have enough drop you wouldn't need the high pressure pump, just keep reducing the feed line size till it gets down to a needle jet. Have 2 or three units side by side to increase energy production.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Solar power will soon be as cheap as coal

Inside a sprawling single-story office building in Bedford, Massachusetts, in a secret room known as the Growth Hall, the future of solar power is cooking at more than 2,500 °F. Behind closed doors and downturned blinds, custom-built ovens with ambitious names like “Fearless” and “Intrepid” are helping to perfect a new technique of making silicon wafers, the workhorse of today’s solar panels. If all goes well, the new method could cut the cost of solar power by more than 20% in the next few years.

“This humble wafer will allow solar to be as cheap as coal and will drastically change the way we consume energy,” says Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, the company behind the new method of wafer fabrication....

Read on!

Solar is about ready to destroy coal!

This is good news, hopefully the house of the future will be a house with solar panels on the top.

 

[Ringel05]

Solar power will soon be as cheap as coal

Inside a sprawling single-story office building in Bedford, Massachusetts, in a secret room known as the Growth Hall, the future of solar power is cooking at more than 2,500 °F. Behind closed doors and downturned blinds, custom-built ovens with ambitious names like “Fearless” and “Intrepid” are helping to perfect a new technique of making silicon wafers, the workhorse of today’s solar panels. If all goes well, the new method could cut the cost of solar power by more than 20% in the next few years.

“This humble wafer will allow solar to be as cheap as coal and will drastically change the way we consume energy,” says Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, the company behind the new method of wafer fabrication....

Read on!

Solar is about ready to destroy coal!

This is good news, hopefully the house of the future will be a house with solar panels on the top.

It would be region specific, what's still lacking is an efficient, cheap storage system for the collected energy to be used when the there is no sun.
One still has to consider ROI, in the southwest one's ROI would most likely be realized in 6 months, in the northwest 10 years.......

 

[MisterBeale]

There is another revolution in energy and it's distribution starting this year. That is grid scale batteries. And China is already making major investments and purchases, some from the US, in this technology.

Sure thing there ORocks. We've done the China "grid scale" miracle before. But of course, you've forgotten the picture of the football stadium size installation of toxic waste that costs $500M and only serves to store energy for 6,000 homes for about 4 hours.. You've a scam artist who cant' accept reality because it would destroy your sales pitch..

As far as this thread goes. Does "cheaper" include the cost of the PRINCIPAL power station that provides energy all night and during bad weather -- but sits idle with the employees eating donuts when the sun is out? What group of morons is gonna fund the development of REAL power stations when the govt requires you to shut down randomly and at their whim to take a bit of solar electricity?

LOL. At the rate the solar installations are going in, there generation will be far more than a bit. And when you can store that power, then why pollute the ground, water, and air by using coal when solar is both cleaner and cheaper.

Before you say nukes, you get about 800 mW of energy in the form of electricity, and throw away about 2000 mW in the form of waste heat. Entropy strikes again. Where the wind and solar do not generate waste heat that you end up putting into the air or water.

Not impressed by thermal efficiencies of nuke plants. MUCH more impressed that you can power a home for a year on 0.7 ounce of waste.

You cannot store enough solar power to make it a 24/7/365 alternative without SEVERE cost and enviro pollution problems. It's not an alternative -- it's an opportunistic "daytime peaker" technology that MIGHT reduce the required peak generation requirement during the day by about 15 to 20% at best.. That's PEAK -- not average daytime load.

You didn't answer my question about whether solar being cheaper includes the waste cost of idling MAIN power plants during peak solar hours? Can you say Homer Simpson sitting on his ass eating donuts and still getting paid?

This reminds me of the class lecture.

The teacher is lecturing and asks the class the very simple and straight forward question, "And of course class, as you know, the biggest drawback with solar power, is it requires one big thing to work. . . Anyone?" "Yes, you in the back?"

Picking on a student in the back. . . .

"Giant government subsidies."



Because, as we all know, if coal wasn't so heavily taxed and regulated, and if solar wasn't so heavily subsidized and encouraged with grants and payoffs, there is no way solar would ever, in a hundred years, be competitive with coal on an open and free market.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Solar power will soon be as cheap as coal

Inside a sprawling single-story office building in Bedford, Massachusetts, in a secret room known as the Growth Hall, the future of solar power is cooking at more than 2,500 °F. Behind closed doors and downturned blinds, custom-built ovens with ambitious names like “Fearless” and “Intrepid” are helping to perfect a new technique of making silicon wafers, the workhorse of today’s solar panels. If all goes well, the new method could cut the cost of solar power by more than 20% in the next few years.

“This humble wafer will allow solar to be as cheap as coal and will drastically change the way we consume energy,” says Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, the company behind the new method of wafer fabrication....

Read on!

Solar is about ready to destroy coal!

This is good news, hopefully the house of the future will be a house with solar panels on the top.

It would be region specific, what's still lacking is an efficient, cheap storage system for the collected energy to be used when the there is no sun.
One still has to consider ROI, in the southwest one's ROI would most likely be realized in 6 months, in the northwest 10 years.......

Of course. I live in a very low sun place, cloudy most of the time, like now.

I think there is a system for storing the energy. I know it's be hard to find right now, but it was in the news a few months ago. I think this will take off within the next 20 years or so.

 

[frigidweirdo]

This reminds me of the class lecture.

The teacher is lecturing and asks the class the very simple and straight forward question, "And of course class, as you know, the biggest drawback with solar power, is it requires one big thing to work. . . Anyone?" "Yes, you in the back?"

Picking on a student in the back. . . .

"Giant government subsidies."



Because, as we all know, if coal wasn't so heavily taxed and regulated, and if solar wasn't so heavily subsidized and encouraged with grants and payoffs, there is no way solar would ever, in a hundred years, be competitive with coal on an open and free market.

The point with subsidies is that you're looking to the future.

People demand that stuff works before people spend money on it. But it won't work unless people spend money on it.

Often the govt is the one that does risky research, that may or may not work, then business, like Pharma companies, will then cherry pick what works and then sell it for a massive fortune claiming that capitalism did all the hard work and the govt is useless.

Funny huh?

Without the govt solar would not take off. However with the govt it MIGHT take off in a way that makes it cheaper than other forms of fuel and is better for the planet, our health and so on.

So, instead of spending billions on healthcare in the future, we're spending it on stuff now.

 

[bripat9643]

You're talking about a perpetual motion machine. They violate the laws of thermodynamics, which means they are impossible.

No it's not a perpetual motion machine as I think you're envisioning it. They already exist, they're just large and expensive or relatively cheap and based on water flow from a river or stream (for individual usage). It's an enclosed system (self feeding) water turbine that I'm talking about.

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

Think!! It would be a reservoir tank at a specific height with two pumps, one to return the water up to the tank and one to high pressure pump the water at the Pelton Wheel generating enough power to run an entire household and the pump itself.
Matter of fact if you have enough drop you wouldn't need the high pressure pump, just keep reducing the feed line size till it gets down to a needle jet. Have 2 or three units side by side to increase energy production.

You just described a perpetual motion machine.

 

[bripat9643]

This reminds me of the class lecture.

The teacher is lecturing and asks the class the very simple and straight forward question, "And of course class, as you know, the biggest drawback with solar power, is it requires one big thing to work. . . Anyone?" "Yes, you in the back?"

Picking on a student in the back. . . .

"Giant government subsidies."



Because, as we all know, if coal wasn't so heavily taxed and regulated, and if solar wasn't so heavily subsidized and encouraged with grants and payoffs, there is no way solar would ever, in a hundred years, be competitive with coal on an open and free market.

The point with subsidies is that you're looking to the future.

People demand that stuff works before people spend money on it. But it won't work unless people spend money on it.

Often the govt is the one that does risky research, that may or may not work, then business, like Pharma companies, will then cherry pick what works and then sell it for a massive fortune claiming that capitalism did all the hard work and the govt is useless.

Funny huh?

Without the govt solar would not take off. However with the govt it MIGHT take off in a way that makes it cheaper than other forms of fuel and is better for the planet, our health and so on.

So, instead of spending billions on healthcare in the future, we're spending it on stuff now.

According to your theory, nothing ever got invented before the government subsidized it. For some reason, things didn't work out that way.

 

[Ringel05]

No it's not a perpetual motion machine as I think you're envisioning it. They already exist, they're just large and expensive or relatively cheap and based on water flow from a river or stream (for individual usage). It's an enclosed system (self feeding) water turbine that I'm talking about.

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

Think!! It would be a reservoir tank at a specific height with two pumps, one to return the water up to the tank and one to high pressure pump the water at the Pelton Wheel generating enough power to run an entire household and the pump itself.
Matter of fact if you have enough drop you wouldn't need the high pressure pump, just keep reducing the feed line size till it gets down to a needle jet. Have 2 or three units side by side to increase energy production.

You just described a perpetual motion machine.

Not what a perpetual motion machine was described to me but that was many decades ago.
So, what about my idea would not work (I'm not an engineer or a physicist).

 

[bripat9643]

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

Think!! It would be a reservoir tank at a specific height with two pumps, one to return the water up to the tank and one to high pressure pump the water at the Pelton Wheel generating enough power to run an entire household and the pump itself.
Matter of fact if you have enough drop you wouldn't need the high pressure pump, just keep reducing the feed line size till it gets down to a needle jet. Have 2 or three units side by side to increase energy production.

You just described a perpetual motion machine.

Not what a perpetual motion machine was described to me but that was many decades ago.
So, what about my idea would not work (I'm not an engineer or a physicist).

Where does the power to run it come from?

 

[Ringel05]

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

Think!! It would be a reservoir tank at a specific height with two pumps, one to return the water up to the tank and one to high pressure pump the water at the Pelton Wheel generating enough power to run an entire household and the pump itself.
Matter of fact if you have enough drop you wouldn't need the high pressure pump, just keep reducing the feed line size till it gets down to a needle jet. Have 2 or three units side by side to increase energy production.

You just described a perpetual motion machine.

Not what a perpetual motion machine was described to me but that was many decades ago.
So, what about my idea would not work (I'm not an engineer or a physicist).

Where does the power to run it come from?

No it's not a perpetual motion machine based on one difference, the energy is created from the flow of water through impellers like in a dam but in this instance instead of allowing the water to escape downstream it's "pumped" back to the reservoir and to continue the flow. The energy created is theoretically enough to not only run the pump(s) but to also run a typical sized house.
A perpetual motion machine does not create it's own energy (or not enough to make it viable, any stored energy in it quickly runs out), that's the difference.

 

[Weatherman2020]

Solar power will soon be as cheap as coal

Inside a sprawling single-story office building in Bedford, Massachusetts, in a secret room known as the Growth Hall, the future of solar power is cooking at more than 2,500 °F. Behind closed doors and downturned blinds, custom-built ovens with ambitious names like “Fearless” and “Intrepid” are helping to perfect a new technique of making silicon wafers, the workhorse of today’s solar panels. If all goes well, the new method could cut the cost of solar power by more than 20% in the next few years.

“This humble wafer will allow solar to be as cheap as coal and will drastically change the way we consume energy,” says Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, the company behind the new method of wafer fabrication....

Read on!

Solar is about ready to destroy coal!

Here in Leftard California Democrats are crushing solar into nonexistance. Next year net metering ends and they have already killed all financial incentives. Democrats are currently working on a bill to charge people using solar because "they aren't paying their fair share".

 

[flacaltenn]

You've had 50 years and BILLIONS and the technology is SO MATURE that companies are competing solely on price now. We are WAAAAY past the wax cylinder stage as JimSouth puts it..

I know you've worked in steel.. Ask the Electrical staff how long wind would power the plant.. Was that on Tuesday or Wednesday that wind in Oregon could power a steel mill.. And -- would it make it into the 2nd shift on the same day?

Interesting...... Soooo, you have stock in coal, got it....... Hell why else would you be arguing so vehemently against renewables?
Half of what I'm reading you say is from years or decades ago (technology related), how long did it take this:

To become this;

They're discussing progress in the renewable field and you seem to be going off the deep end.....

It's truly pathetic how the eco-nutburgers fail to understand the fundamental qualitative difference between computer technology, which involves flipping a few bits around, and energy production, which is constrained by the laws of thermodynamics.

Missing the point? Looks like it.

No, you are missing the point. No physical barriers prevent comuting power from increasing by orders of magnitude. The laws of thermodynamics prevent wind and solar power from increasing by orders of magnitude. At most you are going to squeeze a few more percent out of them. Then you have the problem that neither one of them are reliable. Can you depend on either to keep your house warm on a still day in the dead of winter? No? All it takes is a couple of days without power and you are frozen dead.

Based on what we know and today's technology I agree with you. What is missing is viable "storage capacity".
Heck when it comes to low cost cooling I learned a hard lesson this summer down here in the desert. Swamp coolers are great till it gets over 100 degrees, they only drop temps ten degrees on average....... That's when window units come into play.......

Storage systems are the key to using wind/solar. If you look back at those windmills that every farm used to have, they were not generating electricity, they were pumping water mechanically. A job that you don't really care if it's active all the time -- as long as it gets done..

So --- the BEST uses for wind/solar are pretty much the same. Don't try to shoehorn onto the general grid but find applications where the WORK ITSELF is the storage mechanism..

Plenty of choices there. Water desalinization, ethanol and other bio-fuel production, Hydrogen fuel production, water storage systems, pre-heaters for boilers, etc..

 

[flacaltenn]

Solar power will soon be as cheap as coal

Inside a sprawling single-story office building in Bedford, Massachusetts, in a secret room known as the Growth Hall, the future of solar power is cooking at more than 2,500 °F. Behind closed doors and downturned blinds, custom-built ovens with ambitious names like “Fearless” and “Intrepid” are helping to perfect a new technique of making silicon wafers, the workhorse of today’s solar panels. If all goes well, the new method could cut the cost of solar power by more than 20% in the next few years.

“This humble wafer will allow solar to be as cheap as coal and will drastically change the way we consume energy,” says Frank van Mierlo, CEO of 1366 Technologies, the company behind the new method of wafer fabrication....

Read on!

Solar is about ready to destroy coal!

Here in Leftard California Democrats are crushing solar into nonexistance. Next year net metering ends and they have already killed all financial incentives. Democrats are currently working on a bill to charge people using solar because "they aren't paying their fair share".

The energy folks were telling them for years that you needed to pay for idling other power sources and managing the Grid. Leftists didn't understand the economics of excusing folks from all those other REAL costs of operation. As usual -- Cali gets smart way too late in the game.

 

[flacaltenn]

How many home owners have flowing water on their property?

Did you miss "enclosed, self feeding"? They do exist but they are the size of a small shed and cost around 20K just for the unit.

"Self feeding?" Where does the water come from? I thought you said you weren't talking about a perpetual motion machine. If you don't have flowing water on your property, you have no source of power.

Think!! It would be a reservoir tank at a specific height with two pumps, one to return the water up to the tank and one to high pressure pump the water at the Pelton Wheel generating enough power to run an entire household and the pump itself.
Matter of fact if you have enough drop you wouldn't need the high pressure pump, just keep reducing the feed line size till it gets down to a needle jet. Have 2 or three units side by side to increase energy production.

You just described a perpetual motion machine.

Not what a perpetual motion machine was described to me but that was many decades ago.
So, what about my idea would not work (I'm not an engineer or a physicist).

There ARE systems like you describe. They are flywheel type energy storage units. There were some concepts about using them in cars to recover braking energy before the electric car boom. They have short storage periods. Matter of hours. Not the 16 hours for solar. Or the everyotherday of wind..

Germany experiented with pumped hydro --- A LOT. Tore up pristine mountain sides to run pipes and wires and create storage pools.. The losses in a system like that are HUGE. And would only pay if you had EXCESS to store. In the case of wind -- 1/2 the days -- nothing happens. And the days of "excess" are about 20 or 30 a year..

 

[30 year chrysler mechanic]

spectro lab a boeing company build the 3 wavelength panel 38% efficiency. may be obsolete if black light power's (sun cell )
is all its promised. a lot of money poured into blp last year by some of america's richest men.

 

[Old Rocks]

Some people just love that fossil fuel and therefore hate alternative energy, because they are simply folks that let others think for them.
They hate green, gray is their favorite color.View attachment 42774

Show us a picture of an American or European city with smog that bad.

Silly little boy, obviously you have not been alive very long. There were a bunch of American cities with extremely unhealthy air when I was a young man.


A Darkness in Donora | History | Smithsonian


"It was so bad," Jerry Campa, a Donora, Pennsylvania, restaurateur recalls, "that I'd accidentally step off the curb and turn my ankle because I couldn't see my feet." The acrid, yellowish gray blanket that began to smother the Monongahela River mill town in late October 1948 was more suffocating than anything any Donoran had ever seen—or inhaled—in the past. Before a rainstorm washed the ugly soup away five days later, 20 people had died or would soon succumb and nearly 6,000 of the 14,000 population had been sickened.


"Before Donora," declares Marcia Spink, associate director for air programs for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region III office in Philadelphia, "people thought of smog as a nuisance. It made your shirts dirty. The Donora tragedy was a wake-up call. People realized smog could kill."




Read more: History, Travel, Arts, Science, People, Places | Smithsonian
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In other words, 50 years ago we had a smog problem. Now you can't photograph detectable smog in any large city in America. Which shows your concerns about smog are entirely bogus. The pollution problem has been almost entirely solved. This country is clean enough. Further reductions in pollutants only serve to drive up the price of energy, which is the one and only reason Obama is pursuing them. Only the gullible is fooled by all his blather about pollution.

BriPat, sometimes you are totally a stupid ass. Drove by the Valmy coal fired generators in Nevada a month ago. The air was yellow with the pollution from that plant. Yes, the air was cleaned up in our cities. We move the generation plants away from the cities, we developed a program of sellable pollution credits. And we cleaned up our autos to the point that it takes over 80 of them to put out the pollution that one used to put out. All over the objections of people like you.